Select Actual Used Range in Excel Sheet

It’s easy to select the current range in Excel – just press Ctrl + A. That shortcut selects all the cells in the block that surround the active cell. The selection stops at the first blank row and blank column.

In this example, cell A1 was active, and range A1:A2 was selected with the keyboard shortcut.

Select All Cells

If you use the Ctrl + A shortcut while an isolated or empty cell is selected, then the entire worksheet is selected. In the screen shot below, cell E2 was active when the shortcut was used. The entire sheet was selected.

If the Ctrl + A shortcut selects a range, you can press Ctrl + A again, to select the entire sheet. In the screen shot below, cell A1 was active, and by pressing Ctrl + A twice, the entire worksheet is selected.

Select Filled Cells Only

To select only the filled cells on a worksheet, you can use the Find dialog box.

On the Excel Ribbon’s Home tab, click Find & Select, then click Find (or use the keyboard shortcut — Ctrl+F)

Type an asterisk (*) in the “Find what” field

Click the “Find All” button

Press Ctrl+A to select all the ranges in the list

Click Close

Only the filled cells on the worksheet are selected.

Select the Used Range

To select all the cells in the used range on a worksheet, you can use the following shortcut sequence:

Press Ctrl + Home, to select cell A1

Press Ctrl + Shift + End, to select all cells from A1 to the last used cell.

Select the Actual Used Range

As you can see in the screen shot above, there is nothing visible in cell D8, but it is included in the selected used range. Perhaps there was a value in that cell, and it was deleted, or the cell is formatted.

If you want to select only the cells in the actual used range, you can use this macro instead. The macro was written by Rick Rothstein, and looks for the last cell with a value, and ends the selection there.

Note: This code ignores cells with formulas that are displaying the empty string. If you need to identify formula cells that might be displaying the empty string, then change the xlValues argument to xlFormulas.

@Jelle-Jeroen, thanks for posting your solution.
Rick’s code is useful when the used range includes extra rows or columns that aren’t really used. Sometimes, if you press Ctrl + End, you’ll find that the last cell in the Used Range is way out in an empty region of your worksheet. Rick’s code would ignore those extra cells, and only select from A1 to the last cell that contains data.

As Debra has mentioned, UsedRange does not always return the true used range on the worksheet. However, you do raise a good point about my code assuming the start of the used range is cell A1… that, of course, is not always true. Usually, selecting from cell A1 won’t hurt anything, but if you really want the actual used range on the worksheet, then you would need to use a macro like this one…

Debra, I also like Select Visible Rows. I use it when I want to delete many rows from a filter selection. Choose your filter, select all visible rows, unfilter, delete rows. If you don’t do this and have a hundreds or thousand of rows to delete, it can take 10 minutes to delete them (if it doesn’t crash first). Select Visible Rows is hidden on “other commands”

Jelle-Jeroen is correct though as UsedRange in VBA will evaluate the used range each time you invoke it thus not selecting cleared cells on the edges of the area. Don’t know if it’s any better or worse to use than Rick’s code.

@Domski, in Excel 2010, if I format cell E10 with white font, then change it back to No Fill, that cell is included in the selected range, using Jelle-Jeroen’s code. With Rick’s example, it isn’t selected.

While it is covered in a note on the webpage Debra was kind enough to setup for some of the code I have posted across the years, I just wanted to emphasize it here for those of you who have not visited that webpage…

All of my “last whatever” code posted in this blog article ignores cells with formulas that are displaying the empty string. In other words, the code only identifies the “last whatever” for visibly displayed values (no matter if they are constants or the result of formulas)… that means there could be cells containing formulas (displaying the empty string) located past the identified “last whatever”. If you need to identify the absolute “last whatever” containing data or formulas (no matter what that formula is displaying), then change the xlValues assignment to xlFormulas for the all of the LookIn arguments.

I am guessing you did not read the entire thread as this was covered elsewhere. Very quickly… go to a blank sheet and select cell A1, then press and hold the CTRL key while pressing some other key (say, for example, J10). Okay, you should have two cells selected… change their Fill Color to, say White, and then change it Immediately back to No Fill. Okay, what is the UsedRange. Looking at the sheet, you might say “nothing”. Type this line of code into the Immediate Window and execute it…

Does the print out match your expectations? There are other ways to get UsedRange or SpecialCells’ xlCellTypeLastCell (which uses the UsedRange, by the way) to return an incorrect range… the method I proposed does not suffer from this defect.

My apologies. I was commenting on the used range, not the actual used range as defined by having some value in a cell, which can be a vexing problem at times. Your code works wonders if there is an actual value in the range.

Very useful information. I like the fact that you caught that front end of the range needed trimmed also instead of starting from cell A1. There are two things I noticed that I think the code needs. First, whenever the Find command is used if nothing is returned then an error occurs, so there needs to be some error handling. Secondly, this code has far more versatility if you use it as a function so that it can be used on any worksheet instead of just on the active worksheet. I modified the code some so it will do both.

Sub TestRange()
ActualUsedRange(ActiveSheet).Select
End Sub
Function ActualUsedRange(MySheet As Worksheet) As Range
Dim FirstCell As Range, LastCell As Range
'Go to the ErrorHandler line if an error occurs such as no data in the worksheet
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
With MySheet
'Find the last cell
Set LastCell = .Cells(.Cells.Find(What:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
.Cells.Find(What:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column)
'Find the first cell
Set FirstCell = .Cells(.Cells.Find(What:="*", After:=LastCell, SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlNext, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
.Cells.Find(What:="*", After:=LastCell, SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlNext, LookIn:=xlValues).Column)
'Set what the actual range is
Set ActualUsedRange = .Range(FirstCell, LastCell)
End With
'Exits the function so the error handler isn't called every time
Exit Function
ErrorHandler:
'Sets the range to cell A1 of the worksheet if no data is in the worksheet
Set ActualUsedRange = MySheet.Range("A1")
End Function

Thank you for posting this. Used this today, from Access with automation. I modified it to be a function returning the range, when being passed a worksheet, and needed to explicitly say which worksheet the Cells call had to work on, otherwise it can fail during automation if multiple excel are open.
Public Function GetActualUsedRange(ws As excel.Worksheet) As excel.Range
Set GetActualUsedRange = ws.Range(“A1″).Resize(ws.Cells.Find(What:=”*”, SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
ws.Cells.Find(What:=”*”, SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column)
End Function

I have one more twist. I am filtering a table to select the data I need to copy and paste to another worksheet. I need to be able to select all the data from the current cursor location to the end of actual data. That may be one to 50 rows with a constant number of columns (9).

Currently there are two rows of data;

A2514 – I2514
A2516 – I2516

Any ideas? I’m thinking I’m close with Rick’s solution but I need to start from current cursor location.

Thank you for posting this thread, found it very useful :) I have one problem though.

The code works well only once. I created a word form and users can upload their excel tables by clicking a command button. This works once but when I push the command button for second time (to add a second excel table) the vba gives an error text “Run-time error ’91’: Object variable or With block variable not set”. My code is this:

————————————-

Private Sub Commandbutton_Click()

Dim intChoice As Integer
Dim strPath As String

‘only allow the user to select one file
Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogOpen).AllowMultiSelect = False
‘make the file dialog visible to the user
intChoice = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogOpen).Show
‘determine what choice the user made
If intChoice 0 Then
‘get the file path selected by the user
strPath = Application.FileDialog( _
msoFileDialogOpen).SelectedItems(1)
End If

‘ The function below receives as input a file path and automates that excel workbook
Dim objExcel As Object
Dim objWorkbook As Object

How do you ride the range? In other words, how do you change the focal point of the anchor when you want to copy and paste within a range column(s) or row(s)? Or what are some of the best approaches for copy and paste inside a range?